Tradition: "An inherited or established way
of thinking, feeling or doing - such as attitude, belief, custom,
or institution." (Webster's Third New International Dictionary).

With the dissolution
of the Soviet Union, one political economic system has collapsed;
the new one, replacing it, is not yet in place. Establishing
new traditions to substitute for the old way of doing things
is pivotal for the success of this transition.

The process of substituting a new economic-political system in
the former Soviet Republics is the antithesis of a multi-conglomerate
buying out a smaller company and moving in with all their own
personnel, bureaucratic structures and patterned ways of doing
things. No, the changes must be made from within by the exact
same people who were managing the system before.

Photo:First grader in Russian language
school in Baku studying Azerbaijani language. The primer is written
in Cyrillic script which is still much more widely used than
the modified-Latin script adopted as the official Azeri alphabet
in late 1991. Photo: Oleg Litvin

And that's why the process is necessarily an evolutionary
one. It cannot happen overnight because of what might be called
"hangovers" from the past-established ways of thinking,
feeling and doing that effect the attitudes, beliefs, and customs
and institutions of a nation. The new ways must be internalized,
not simply by a single individual but collectively by many.

In order to enter the international market economy, Azerbaijan
needs a new infrastructure. Obviously, many of the old bureaucratic
structures are still in place. The same people manage them in
the same old ways. Many practices are outdated and don't meet
the standards that will enable the Azerbaijanis to compete in
the world's arena.

As well, seventy years living and working in a system that assured
everyone of a salary whether they produced or not is a difficult
tradition to break. But an even more Herculean task, is instilling
individuals with the belief that they can initiate change. As
power used to be concentrated at the top of the hierarchy, most
workers were, and still are, used to feeling powerless. They
lack the confidence that they can make a difference as individuals
in the larger scheme of things. They are prone to shrug off responsibilities,
saying that their bosses are the ones that should handle such
decisions. Many have not been trained to solve problems in an
administrative sense. The concepts of self-determination and
self-entrepreneurship have not yet penetrated the nation's psyche.

Many laws are needed to protect individual efforts and guarantee
rights of private ownership, supportive banking services, insurance,
tax and customs standards and regulations. Simply put, for a
country to successfully enter the market economy, it needs the
infrastructure to do so; it has to be "businessable",
so to speak. A market economy doesn't just happen if these supporting
structures are not in place.

And all of these changes, these new traditions, take money to
set in place. Money to train people. Money for equipment. Money
to develop new approaches. Right now, money is the greatest hindrance
to Azerbaijan's entering the market economy. Each of the 15 Republics
is experiencing incredible difficulties, but Azerbaijan's problems
are compounded by the additional burden of financing a six-year
old war and of finding provisions (shelter, food, medical supplies)
for its 1.1 million citizens who have been pushed out from their
homes by Armenian aggression.

Fortunately, Azerbaijan is blessed with incredible natural resources
that may, if wisely administered, enable the country to accelerate
the processes of entering a market economy and ensuring the sovereignty
of their own country. The potential of the country, in terms
of oil and gas deposits alone, has been compared with some of
the most productive oil-generating countries in the world, such
as Kuwait or the North Seas. It's critical that the final details
be worked out and the oil contract with Consortium companies
be signed quickly - for the very survival of the nation. Azerbaijan
has a good contract in hand that should serve them well. Now
they need to take the initiative, to assert their own authority,
and move to secure a deal which is beneficial for their own development.
But quickly.

At the same time, Azerbaijan does not exist in a vacuum by itself.
The changes that have occurred in the Soviet Union directly effect
each one of us - even those who haven't the slightest clue about
what's going on in that part of the world. The West is in a position
to assist in this painful and precarious, unsure transition,
the outcome of which is not assured or guaranteed.

In January when President Clinton went to Moscow, he affirmed
the need for helping the Russians. "It is in our interest,"
he said at a town meeting, "to be able to spend less on
defense and to invest more in our own people, in the education
and health and welfare and technology that will help to carry
us into a better time in the 21st century. It is in our interest
to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction and to cooperate
with you in reducing threats to peace all around the world. It
is in our interest to develop new trade ties and new customers.
And each of these developments is more likely if we have a genuine
equal partnership with a strong and free Russia."

The same speech needs to be made not only to Azerbaijanis in
Baku but to the US Congress and to the American people as well.
Presently, the United States' denial of aid - even humanitarian
and medical aid to refugees (via the exclusion of Azerbaijan
from the US "Freedom Support Act" since 1992) is not
a neutral, even-handed, just decision. And it works to the detriment
of Azerbaijan, to the detriment of long-range interests of the
region, the US and the world (See Bill Frelick, US committee
on Refugees recommends Lifting of Ban).

Azerbaijan's President, Heydar Aliyev (see Interview) alluded
to the dark threatening clouds gathering above Azerbaijan from
the North. He cautiously warned, "With the dissolution of
the old Soviet System and the end of Cold War and weapons base,
the tensions between the East and West have eased considerably.
These changes have brought about the birth of several new-born
nations. Although many old problems and conflicts have disappeared
with these changes, there are now potentially dangerous new problems
which are not of less significance than the old problems, especially
in terms of the impact they can make on civilization and world
peace."

Azerbaijan, along with the rest of the world, needs to take an
active, far-sighted, approach to ensuring that the threats of
Russian colonialism, presently manifested in the pressure Russia
is trying to bring (and in many cases is succeeding in doing
so) upon the former Republics to place her troops back in all
of these regions. We must all be concerned about being thrust
back into an era even more threatening than decades of Cold War
from which we have just emerged.

Azerbaijanis have a tradition of peppering their speech with
many proverbs. Despite their vast treasury of expressions from
which to choose, however, there seem to be very few that deal
with the concepts of time, speed, or seizing opportunities that
present themselves today but that may not exist tomorrow if delayed.
Perhaps that's part of the problem. Such traditions don't seem
to exist. The Soviet system shielded Azerbaijanis from 70 years
of world competitiveness. Suddenly this new embryonic nation
is being forced to emerge from an economy patterned on earlier
years of this century when transportation, telecommunications
and information exchange barely existed on an international level.
There's a lot of catching up to do. Time is of the essence -
for the survival of Azerbaijan and for the survival of our world,
too.